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Friday, July 06, 2007

Dildo police strike again: What is wrong with the American South?

The dildo police have struck again. I am convinced that someone must be doctoring the water in the Bible Belt. Nothing else could possibly explain the utter silliness of this region of the country. Well, almost nothing else.

In Jackson, Mississippi police arrested three individuals at two adult bookstores for selling “sex toys”. They even conducted an “undercover” operation. Under whose covers?

To protect the residents of Mississippi from rampaging dildos and dangerous vibrators the police arrested clerk James Henderson. The owner of store, Harry Rosenthal, was informed of the raid and when he went to the shop to find out what was going on police slapped the cuffs on this dangerous criminal as well. Elsewhere Misty Jordan was arrested at another adult shop.

A witness who works in the same building as the store says police arrived shortly after the shop had a delivery of inventory. The police “just started taking boxes” said the witness, Charles Hobby. He said that some of the boxes were nothing more than lotions or massage oils.

The Theocratic impulse in the American South is a strong one. Don’t you regret winning that damn civil war now? Better off to have let them go. Of course that would mean we’d be building the wall in a slightly different location but it would have helped keep the God-botherers from infesting the rest of the country with their silliness.

About the only place this sort of nonsense takes place is in Jesusland, USA. In Lubbock, Texas police arrested a clerk for selling dildos. This is the same town were the police arrested the Chippendale dancers because the chief of police says he saw a “pelvic thrust”.

We even have a Theopublican legislator who has distributed literature claiming that evolution is a Jewish plot to undermine Christianity arguing, on video, as to why the state should protect people from dildos -- albeit not from dildos who get elected to office on the Republican ticket in Texas. (Follow that last link to see the video where this moron defends the dildo law. It's hilarious.)

In South Carolina another Theopublican (those are Republicans who are theocrats), Ralph Davenport, introduced legislation which would make it a felony to sell any device that helps induce sexual pleasure. Under his legislation a dildo would be considered “obscene” and anyone selling this piece of vinyl or plastic could go to prison for five years and pay the extortionist in the State a $10,000 penalty.

Now as far as I know these absurd laws exist only in the South including Alabama and Georgia. In Texas a dildo can be sold but has to be called by another name. If you say it is a “safe sex demonstration device” you are within the law. If you say, “Hey, how much is that dildo in the window?” and the clerk tells you then the clerk is off to prison.

The last bastion of slavery in the Western world was the American South. The South enshrined segregation as a way of life well into the latter part of the 1900s. The anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, anti-Black Ku Klux Klan thrived in the South. While lynchings took place in many states they were mostly concentrated in the South, particularly the deep South. The states that supported the bigoted campaign of George Wallace for President were all in the South. The flight to Christian schools was primarily in the South and mainly to avoid segregation, not because of secularism. The last states in the US to want to incarcerate people for gay sex were all Southern except for two Mormon dominated states. And the states that arrest and prosecute people for dildos are once again in the South.

Now I know that the racist Right loves to discuss “Southern culture”. Sorry, I don’t call that culture. I’m sure some Southerners will take offense at what I’ve written. Good! Maybe they will start taking offense at the stupidity of what their fellow citizens are doing to one another. If they aren’t offended by the last two hundred years of Southern history then they deserve to be offended by this essay.

Instead of building that damn wall around the Rio Grande and points west we ought to put it up along the Mason-Dixon Line. It’s not too late. The US Congress can still grant the South independence and allow them to fall into the static quagmire of a culture steeped in superstition and statism. Of course I suspect that at this point in time they won’t leave. As they see it they are intent on conquering the North. I don’t think they will and come the next national elections the Theopublicans will be in for a shock. But still the idea that we have this sort of nonsense going on in this century is scary.